Ford Probe Audio Amplifier Modding *USB LCD / winamp visual*

I know it will be tough to have it there, but the on/off switch looks out of place, maybe if you can find space for it on the back piece...

 

Hate to bump my own thread, but I just wanted to update it with the most recent status. Currently I am looking to cut away parts of the pcb to allow the lcd to fit properly. Which means I will have to relocate about 4 or 5 traces so it is no big deal.

Also I am working with ch424 to get a USB based interface for the parallel lcd. Once that is up I will add a usb port to my mockup back and start sourcing some aluminum to finish the project

 

hey man just stumbled onto your project. looks pretty good. cant say i dont like it what kind of wattage does it supply? like 30-50w rms per channel?

my mate has a tiny little car audio amp that im thinking of doing the same kinda thing to... keep it up!

 

After a while I have finally decided to progress and move towards completion of this little mini project. I have ch424 sending me one of his usb hd44 lcd controllers in the mail, many thanks for his support. I have also decided to cut a mockup plexyglass top plate to the amp just to see how I like the looks of it having a clear lid. I cut the plexy from the clear diffuser plastic from the back of a busted laptop panel. It is not a terribly nice plate or nice cuts I preformed on it, but it will do well for demonstration moving towards completion.

I also added some internal lighting by using 8 superbright LED's that I desoldered from a old car's brake light bar. I have the led's undervolted just a little bit to prevent damage and also because I do not need it to be really bright, just to be clear and diffuse well.

Pictures:

The newly added clear top to the amp, note the LCD has been removed awaiting its usb controller counterpart.


Just two more shots and showing all the cables plugged into it as current.


Pic of the LED's all turned on
-Trust me this looks way better in person my terrible camera does not do it justice, this is also a rich red and not orange or pink.


Of course no light job is complete without some dark shots of it lit up, yet again this looks quite impressive in the dark.


I would love to hear any input, any suggestions on what to change or do differently. I am considering putting 2 usb ports on the front of the unit just to fill up some empy space on it.

 

just to neaten up the inside have you thought of sleeving the cabling going to the RCA plugs & the speaker connections? probably a bit late for me to be suggesting this, sorry.

I like the lighting... as you say I imagine that it would look even better in real life.

I think i have it figured but will ask anyways. The connections to the speaker terminals, you have just heatshrunk them and then marked them, correct? They look like resistors when quickly looking at the pics but i think earlier in the thread there were some better shots... can you just confirm what they are?

Looking awesome so far... little bit of time and patience goes a long way!

 

Yea, I marked the heatshrink going to the speaker terminals with lines correspoinding to numbers 1,2,3,4. These numbers mate up with the marked wires going to the rca jacks, though you probably cannot see those marked in the pictures. I may neaten that up a little bit and get rid of the markings, but it is kinda interesting just to leave them there.

Good idea on the sleeving, it is a real mess of wires in there which is about to get way messier. I still have the LCD, usb 2.0 hub, 2 front usb ports and the back usb input plug to add. That is bound to get things interesting

 

niiiice! i like it!very good but i would prefer blue leds. but its your mod and its your call....

 

Quite a large update here, I have installed the USB lcd controller from ch424 and configured a few screens through lcd smartie. Detailed below:

Step 1)
Build the controller per ch424's diagram and code located in the mod guide here: Make your own USB LCD controller! And then install the drivers to connect it to windows.

Step 2) install and configure lcd smartie per what you want it to display. In my case a winamp spectrum analyzer. You can download lcd smartie here: LCD Smartie Download also grab the plugin for winamp and install that per the instructions

It is fairly explainitory from there on, just configure things how you want it to be. Here are some pics of my setup:



Currently just a temporary setup of the driver board and the usb plug, Soon I will put the usb port on the back of the amp so it can be unplugged rather reasily. but for now in the testing phases it works just fine.


I have lcd smartie so that when winamp is playing it displays the spectrum analyzer with the song title scrolling at the bottom.


When winamp is paused it blinks the word paused with the song title scrolling. when winamp is off or stopped i have it display cpu and ram usage graphs.


I have two videos of the spectrum analyzer running. Though taken with my motorola razr it is quite terrible quality. my phone takes video in .3g2 format which can be played with either quicktime or quicktime alternative, but i have also encoded them into divx format. The videos are in super small size so maybe if you stretch it out in whatever player you use it will be easier to see. links below:

Video 1: > Quicktime < > DivX <
Video 2: > Quicktime < > DivX <


I would love to hear any input thanks

 

ZOMFG sweet dude, i like it, i'm thinking about putting one of those lcds somewhere, maybe my kvm? idk yet

looks good though, i think it needs some lasers.